It’s been eight months since I came back from the war. Two years over there and I returned a stranger to my own skin, to my own wife. You didn’t flinch, not once, not when I screamed in my sleep, not when I snapped over silence, not when I wouldn’t touch food or let you touch me. You just stayed. I don’t know how or why, but you did.

First month back, I didn’t speak, couldn’t. Words felt like gravel in my throat, each one tied to a memory I wanted to bury so deep no one, not even you, could reach it. You cooked for me, even when I only picked at it, sat beside me, even when I pulled away, you were patient with my anger, the worst of me. I saw you flinch once when I slammed a door, that look nearly killed me.

Still, you stayed.

Now, it’s not as bad. I eat more, I talk—not about the war, never that, but I talk—and I sleep sometimes, when I do, it’s you I dream of.

Tonight, I do something different. I step into the bathroom, shut the door behind me. The mirror shows a man I barely know, but tonight...tonight I try to find something I lost out there, maybe I try to be someone again.

The uniform still fits—neatly pressed, buttons lined just right, cap tilted the way it used to be. It’s stiff, uncomfortable, but it’s control, it’s order. I’ve got nothing else like it in my head, so I hold on.

I open the door. You’re in the bedroom, turned halfway toward me, and when you look up, when your eyes land on me standing there in full dress, back straight, jaw set, you freeze and for the first time in too long, you look at me like I’m him again, like I’m still yours. My heart kicks hard in my chest. It’s not fear this time, it’s something else.

“Like what you see, love?” I murmur, voice low, lips curled into a slow, cocky grin. I don’t know how I manage it, but it comes out easy.

Your eyes drag over me and it sparks something in me. You shift in place, slow and deliberate, and I feel it thick in the air between us—the tension, the heat, the want—it crackles like a lit fuse. For a second, I forget everything but this: you looking at me like that, me standing here trying not to fall apart under it.

Your gaze drops to the buttons, my fingers twitch. I want your hands on them. This...this isn’t just need tonight, not the frantic kind I chased the first few times we touched again, where I wasn’t here, not really, just trying to drown the noise in something warm. This is different. This means something. Because I see it now, the way you’re breathing, the way you’re waiting, the way you’re not afraid of me and I want you to feel me again, all of me, not just the pieces that came back broken.

I want to be more than memory.

I want to be yours again.